]]>Educationally, traditional video games have much to offer at multiple levels: in the sub-conscious realm of information processing, at the conscious level in terms of content material, and above the material level by teaching many critical thinking strategies which are applicable across a wide range of subjects and situations (Klopfer et al., 7). In addition to these general patterns of problem solving and higher-order-thinking that video games encourage, specifically focused games can teach players to think and solve problems in very specific ways.

Games are excellent learning tools because they can effectively teach players not just facts, but how to think in certain ways. Knowledge is not acquired in a vacuum; as Shaffer and his colleagues write, “We learn by becoming part of a community of practice and thus developing that community’s ways of knowing, acting, being, and caring – the community’s situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values.” (Shaffer et al., 7) In a video game, players are easily transported into communities of practice. In the game Full Spectrum Warrior, a game adopted from a training simulator used by the U.S. Army, the player learns to think like a soldier by inhabiting a world of soldiers.

One of the ways the player learns in this environment is through the distributed intelligence of the game – the player knows something and the game knows some other thing… Games today are complex enough that often players play as just one member on a team while the rest of the team is controlled by the game’s artificial intelligence. These team members, due to their intelligence, allow the player to perform tasks before being fully competent at their performance. For example, in a football simulation game (which are becoming more and more popular with both collegiate and professional teams across the country), a player playing as the quarterback may be able to execute a ten yard pass play before he is truly good at doing so. The ten yard completion is possible not only because of the player’s skill, but because of the intelligence of the player’s teammates: the linemen knew how to block and the receivers knew how to run and catch. This “performance before competence” allows the player to experiment as a quarterback, eventually becoming competent through trial, error, and feedback (Gee, 13). Additionally, the player will also become competent in the facts that the computer teammates already know (how specific routes should be run on a specific pass play) through their continued demonstration and use (Shaffer et al., 9).

Additionally, along with other computer-controlled inhabitants of the world, the very world itself – the rules it is governed by – immerses the player in a consistent epistemic frame. Instead of being allowed to completely roam free, games can use restrictions to impart a set of values and way of thinking upon a player. Returning to Full Spectrum Warrior, the player learns to solve problems by communicating with other military leaders and giving the proper order to subordinate troops, not by driving a racecar through a set of checkpoints faster than anybody else. Success in the game depends on internalizing and utilizing the ways of thinking that are valued in the military (Shaffer et al., 10).

The established educational framework into which video games most obviously fit is “grappling”, as pioneered by Ted Sizer. In a curriculum based on grappling, students are constantly questioning and testing their values, the information being presented to them, their abilities. Video games encourage grappling in multiple ways. As Sizer says, “Grappling is necessarily a balancing act. One is trying to do what one has never done before and learning more about what one wants to do.” (Sizer, 23) Grappling on this level occurs when students playing the game itself. Specifically, using Prensky’s terminology, this would be on Learning Levels 2 and 3: Learning What and Learning Why. At these levels, players are figuring out the game’s rules and strategy, and to do so they actively engage in the scientific method, reaching for and discovering new meaning in their virtual environment. They are engrossed in, “The spiraling of ideas, the testing and retesting and testing again of hypotheses.” (Sizer, 34)

The second stage of grappling that video games encourage is encompassed in Levels 4 and 5 of Presky’s framework: Learning Where and Learning When/Whether. On these levels, players learn about and question the validity and ethics of the game world. This type of grappling, in which students actively participate in discovering their own values, is highly valuable in Sizer’s eyes; he writes of the importance for students to grapple with meanings (Sizer, 23). Literature is one excellent jumping off point for this type of search, and often provokes challenging questions from within the reader, questions about human nature, society’s values, personal responsibility, etc (Sizer, 28), but, as Sizer notes, “Literature is but one field which can provide the stuff, or the point of departure, for thinking deeply about ethical matters such as justice.” (Sizer, 31) Games can also lead to this type of grappling. As a medium, games are so young that people are still trying to figure out how to use them to deal with complex issues such as those explored in film or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird effectively. However, when games with serious social content, whose goal or theme is a social issue, they will be able to explore just as thoroughly, if not more, than books or movies because games can put the player more directly inside the situation being explored. Instead of watching Atticus and Scout deal with racism, the player himself will be witnessing and responding to the same issues.

Along with grappling, using video games in the classroom as teaching tools is in support of multi-cultural education. Sonia Nieto, in her book, The Light in Their Eyes, defines culture as “the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion.” (Nieto, 48) A multi-cultural educational environment is one that recognizes that different students come into the classroom with different learning styles because of their cultures, and that a truly democratic education must value each of these (Nieto, 63). Additionally, multi-cultural classrooms affirm not only the learning style that accompanies each culture in the classroom, but each culture itself. Relating lessons to a student’s culture is a great way to create situated meaning for a student, resulting in a deeper understanding of a topic. A multi-cultural classroom seeks to maximize each student’s learning by teaching to the whole of each student, not just the part of the student that recognizes the dominant classroom culture.

Even among children living in different geographic regions in the United States who have vastly different backgrounds, Nieto asserts that there exists some form of shared “youth culture,” (Nieto, 50). For a large percentage of American youth, this culture includes video games. “In a given week, the average eighth-grade boy will play video games for about 23 hours, while the average girl will play about 12 – that’s even more time than they spend watching TV,” and as a result, students are often already fluent in the language of video games (Klopfer, et al. 1). Much importance has been placed on affirming students’ native languages in the classroom (Nieto, 60), but the language of video games that students bring to school is largely ignored. In a multi-cultural classroom, the learning styles of a student’s culture and the student’s culture itself are affirmed and used to improve the student’s education. Not including video games in education disregards the powerful methods of learning that students are engaging in every day outside of the classroom, but also tries to dismiss this very real aspect of students’ lives as illegitimate. A true multi-cultural classroom recognizes students’ playing of video games and uses it to enhance their learning inside the classroom instead of ignoring it because it is not a part of the teacher’s own culture.

Video games should be a part of an effective classroom. They teach information processing techniques, specific academic content, and critical thinking and problem solving skills in ways that are not replicable through other educational techniques. They provide situated meaning for content that is otherwise without context, and encourage scientific exploration, creative problem solving, and questioning the rules and ethics of the surrounding world. These reasons alone should be enough to encourage the incorporation of video games into the classroom and teacher training programs. However, beyond their educational value on their own, video games are a part of many students’ cultures. They are digital natives growing up in a digital world, and an education that affirms the whole student cannot overlook the part of the student that plays video games.

]]>http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-part-3-of-3/feed/0Meaningful Fun: Why Video Games Should be Used in the Classroom (Part 2 of 3)http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-2-of-3/
http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-2-of-3/#commentsMon, 13 Jun 2011 20:57:12 +0000http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/games/?p=73Along with developing in gamers new methods of low-level but useful information processing, games can do an excellent job of teaching content material. Playing the PC game Civilization can teach players about geography and history just as players can learn about graphing and set theory in The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and Tetris and other puzzle games may build pattern recognition capabilities (Gee, 1). What makes these games effective teaching tools, though? David Shaffer and his colleagues at the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would posit that games are such good teaching tools because their virtual worlds help develop “situated understanding,” (Shaffer, et al., 4). Instead of sitting in a dorm room in Chicago, reading about economics and neo-Classical thought with respect to currency speculation, a student who has purchased the game Lineage can actually experience speculating on currency (Shaffer et al., 4). This experience happens through a proxy, the player’s character, and the currency may not be real currency (although in many games it can be), but even so the game forges a much closer connection with the abstract idea of economics because its lessons are taught in a relevant situation (that inhabited... See more»

]]>Along with developing in gamers new methods of low-level but useful information processing, games can do an excellent job of teaching content material. Playing the PC game Civilization can teach players about geography and history just as players can learn about graphing and set theory in The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and Tetris and other puzzle games may build pattern recognition capabilities (Gee, 1). What makes these games effective teaching tools, though?

David Shaffer and his colleagues at the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would posit that games are such good teaching tools because their virtual worlds help develop “situated understanding,” (Shaffer, et al., 4). Instead of sitting in a dorm room in Chicago, reading about economics and neo-Classical thought with respect to currency speculation, a student who has purchased the game Lineage can actually experience speculating on currency (Shaffer et al., 4). This experience happens through a proxy, the player’s character, and the currency may not be real currency (although in many games it can be), but even so the game forges a much closer connection with the abstract idea of economics because its lessons are taught in a relevant situation (that inhabited by the character in the game world), not one far removed from application (the dorm room).

Understanding complex academic language is crucial for success in school (Gee, 15). However, in many cases students learn vocabulary without any real world context and thus cannot use their knowledge in any meaningful way (even if they may pass a vocabulary test). In order to learn the situated meaning of a word (since many words can have many meanings), it greatly helps to have “experienced the images and actions,” to which the word applies. Video games can do an excellent job of situating new language. A good video game will introduce the player to new language only when that language is ready to be applied. This way, the word can be experienced by the player as it is being learned, thus increasing the player’s understanding of the word’s situated meaning, not simply one of its many dictionary definitions.

Additionally, the virtual worlds of games foster interpersonal communication and develop in their players, “a set of effective social practices.” (Shaffer et al., 5) The crux of online games directly involves trading with, competing against, cooperating with, and talking to other human players. World of Warcraft teaches “guildmasters” about “attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and managing disputes.” (Klopfer, et al. 5)

In many cases, this deep interaction between participants is at direct odds with traditional education techniques. Occasionally students will get to share with, collaborate with, and teach each other in group work. How often is it, though, that two groups of students, from opposite poles of the Earth, will get to share their discoveries with each other, comment on each others’ work, and improve their own in response to the feedback they have received from twelve time zones away? In gaming communities, this happens daily.

The final power that games bring as virtual worlds is the ability for players to explore “new and powerful identities,” (Shaffer et al., 6). In many games, players can inhabit and explore spaces that they may never be able to outside of the game, such as ancient China or a planet from Star Wars, but an even more powerful experience that games offer is the taking on of a novel identity, one that often has more power than the player’s identity outside of the game. And while bossing around millions of virtual farmers as an ancient Chinese emperor certainly provides an opportunity for exploration and learning different from those provided a 13-year-old in everyday life, it is entirely possible in an online game for a 13-year-old to become mayor of a virtual town that it is inhabited by characters controlled by hundreds of real people. Certainly the challenges presented to the player in this situation – running a real judicial system and police force, managing a large political campaign, etc. – are not easily found outside of a game.

The skills taught by games’ content (graph reading, political theory, group management) are important, and they stick with players because they are situated in contexts that are meaningful to the players. However, other classroom activities besides video games can be more contextually relevant to students’ lives and more immersive as well. Studying ecology in a crop field near a rural, farm-community school is certainly more relevant than doing so as a scientist on a computer screen, and physically acting out the feudal system, paying m&m tithes to the higher social classes is more immersive than current video games. Indeed, real-life experience is often a more effective teaching tool than video games, but video games can “create learning opportunities and experiences that might otherwise never be able to be created in the traditional classroom,” (Klopfer et al., 8). Games make it possible for students to conduct experiments about how large scale forest fires spread and how to contain and prevent them, when in real life, this kind of experimentation would be incredibly dangerous, harmful to the environment, and illegal. Games are not the silver bullet best instructional method. They are not a replacement of valuable teaching techniques and experiential learning, but rather a useful supplement. Read the rest >>

]]>http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-2-of-3/feed/0Meaningful Fun: Why Video Games Should be Used in the Classroom (Part 1 of 3)http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-1-of-3/
http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/2011/06/13/meaningful-fun-1-of-3/#commentsMon, 13 Jun 2011 20:55:45 +0000http://www.brainpop.com/educators/community/games/?p=68Video games get a bad rap. Parents ban their children from ever playing them, social critics bemoan them for their violence, and teachers view them as brain-killing devices par excellence. And yet, kids still play them, even more than they watch TV or movies (Klopfer, et al. 1). Millions of children and adults simply love to play video games, and indeed, “Computer games seem to motivate young people in a way that formal education doesn’t.” (Facer, page 1) Then why not harness this incredibly captivating medium for educational purposes? Why not use kids’ inherent interest in this technology to teach? Choosing to use videogames in the classroom can provide students with amazing educational opportunities. Games can teach their players in many different ways, on many different levels. From the core mechanics of how video games are played, they teach new and important ways of processing information. From their immersive environments, they create situated meaning which lets academic content be more deeply understood. Through their modes of play they teach students higher order thinking skills, and by using detailed simulations, they can train students how to think in certain, specific ways. All of these opportunities for learning are largely ignored in... See more»

]]>Video games get a bad rap. Parents ban their children from ever playing them, social critics bemoan them for their violence, and teachers view them as brain-killing devices par excellence. And yet, kids still play them, even more than they watch TV or movies (Klopfer, et al. 1). Millions of children and adults simply love to play video games, and indeed, “Computer games seem to motivate young people in a way that formal education doesn’t.” (Facer, page 1) Then why not harness this incredibly captivating medium for educational purposes? Why not use kids’ inherent interest in this technology to teach? Choosing to use videogames in the classroom can provide students with amazing educational opportunities.

Games can teach their players in many different ways, on many different levels. From the core mechanics of how video games are played, they teach new and important ways of processing information. From their immersive environments, they create situated meaning which lets academic content be more deeply understood. Through their modes of play they teach students higher order thinking skills, and by using detailed simulations, they can train students how to think in certain, specific ways. All of these opportunities for learning are largely ignored in traditional classrooms, and even in progressive ones. However, they should not be. Video games not only have their own lessons to teach as stated above, but they also fit into educational frameworks that are being put into practice today.

All video games teach players some meaningful skills. There is learning going on in even the most graphically violent, or mundane, or socially-backwards video game. Studies have shown that “regular and intensive games play is developing… a set of new cognitive abilities,” in young people (Facer, 1). Video games of all types are teaching five primary new skills in information processing, none of which will come as a shock to someone who has spent time playing video games. First, gamers develop the ability to process information quickly (Facer, 1). In almost all games, there is some time-sensitive issue that the player must react to, a rapidly approaching meteor for example, that requires a split-second decision from the player. Second, players develop the ability to quickly sort out relevant from irrelevant information (Facer, 1). Why should I waste time breaking all of the blocks with Mario’s head when I know that only those marked with a “?” have coins in them? Third, youngsters playing games are able to process information from multiple sources simultaneously (Facer, 1), such as the overhead map in the bottom left corner of the screen, the audio instructions coming from the game’s speakers, and the first-person view that occupies most of the screen. Fourth, players become adept at, “Exploring information in a non-linear fashion – creating links rather than following a story,” (Facer, 1). In many games (of the non-boring variety), clues and useful objects are not used by the player in the order they are found. A player may have to use the key found in level one to unlock the door in level three where she can pick up the piece to the robot that was discovered in level two. Lastly, gamers learn to access information through images first, and then text as most games today are graphically based (Facer, 1). All of these skills are highly relevant and becoming more so in our digital age, although they are not in all state standards, many national education associations have recognized them as critical skills for the coming century (Klopfer et al., 7). Most educational techniques used in schools today do not teach these patterns of processing information, but games – almost all games – do. Read the rest >>